


Travelers

by IShouldBeWriting



Category: Primeval
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-06
Updated: 2011-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was having a big case of writer's block so I asked for prompts.  This series was born out of those.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Miles TO Go Before I Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: This one came from [](http://deinonychus-1.livejournal.com/profile)[**deinonychus_1**](http://deinonychus-1.livejournal.com/) who wanted me to write Becker/Jess - conversation in the dark. The prompt turned sideways on me (of course, because don't they always in my brain?) and what I got instead was Becker/Abby. Don't worry [](http://deinonychus-1.livejournal.com/profile)[**deinonychus_1**](http://deinonychus-1.livejournal.com/) you'll get your original prompt too eventually.....

  
“I’d forgotten how many stars there are.”

Becker’s words were felt more than heard, a rumbling of harmonics in the chest beneath her and his mouth beside her ear. She shivered and he pulled her tighter to his side for a moment, lips caressing across her cheek in an affectionate gesture born of familiarity as much as sentiment. Sometimes it was the warmth and comfort drawn of these miniscule rituals more than anything else that kept them both going day after day.

She shifted her body beside him, seeking a comfortable position for her hips on the hard packed ground beneath them. He let out a tiny umph of breath when her elbow accidentally connected.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, half asleep already.

He looked over at her, watching as she drifted away from him into dreamland. A smudge ran from her cheek down to her chin, probably from wiping her hair out of her face with a dirt-crusted hand. Farther down, he could feel the gentle swell of her abdomen pressed against his side.

Looking out into the distance through one of the cracks in the makeshift barricade of the decaying building which they’d called home for the past 3 months, Becker could see the coruscating sparkle and shift of an anomaly just a few hundred yards away. It’d been opening and closing at regular 3 hour intervals for three days now. It figured that Connor of all people would think to get their attention by patterning the opening and shutting of the anomaly to spell out S.O.S. in Morse Code.

Gripping the Mossberg he’d scavenged from the skeletal remains of Helen’s last foray into the future, Becker silently vowed that tomorrow would be the day. Even if he died to keep the future predators off their backs, tomorrow he’d send Abby back through that doorway. Back into Connor’s arms. Back to where she could give birth to their child in safety.

Beside him, Abby whimpered in her sleep. He turned his head to whisper into her ear, the sound of his voice soothing away the fears and nightmares.

 _“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.”_   



	2. Safe Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based off the prompt that [](http://fredbassett.livejournal.com/profile)[**fredbassett**](http://fredbassett.livejournal.com/) handed me: Stephen/Ryan “Safe return.” Many thanks, Fred, for offering me something so rich in potential and helping to shake the writer's block loose!

  
Looking back on it now, the first step hadn’t been a hard one to take. The anomaly had appeared in front of Stephen like the burning bush before Moses. It scintillated and shivered brightly and it had taken no thought at all on Stephen’s part walk through. With one broad step, he’d chosen a life unknown on the other side of a gateway through time rather than certain death at the hands of a pack of predators from eons past and future. It hadn’t been a choice at all.

Now as he stood in wide-eyed wonder looking at the green rolling hills dotted with anomalies, he could not yet find it in himself to take the next step. Battered and bruised, adrenaline still coursing through his veins, he ran a shaking hand through dirty brown hair. He walked a few hundred meters from the anomaly through which he’d come and sat down in the grass. Moisture from the soil beneath soaked into the seat of his pants but Stephen couldn’t find it in himself to care at this particular moment. Hopefully the various predators he’d left behind were more interested in holding the grudge match of the millennia than chasing after one measly human.

The last time Stephen had encountered the spaghetti junction of anomalies, Nick theorized that it was located sometime in the Permian era. As good a guess as any and it was unlikely that there should be more than one place in time like this one.

Thoughts of the last time he’d been here inevitably led Stephen to remember who’d been with him. Tom Ryan. With an ache inside his chest, he could almost see once again the look of awe on the taciturn soldier’s face. Gun forgotten, the other man let his guard down to stare openly at what had to have been hundreds of anomalies.

When Tom turned his face back toward Stephen everything changed. For one brief moment, Stephen had seen desire and vulnerability lurking in the depths of the other man’s eyes. It’d taken him a week after they’d gotten back to their own time, but he’d eventually cornered the SF captain and flatly asked him over for dinner.

Tom hadn’t left Stephen’s flat that night nor the following one.

Weeks later, Tom went through another anomaly and never came back. A small part of Stephen felt like it had died that day alongside his lover. There hadn’t even been a body to bury, Nick having been insistent that they couldn’t disturb the timelines. It’d been the beginning of a rift between them. One that Stephen, wounded and grieving, had done nothing to mend.

Now, as he sat here watching the shiver of anomalies change the quality of light for miles on end, Stephen wondered yet again which one of them had been right.

Did something as simple as bringing a dead body back to it’s proper time change everything? Was it possible that each of these anomalies led to a different potential past, present, or future? Perhaps, if Nick’s beloved Claudia Brown was out there somewhen, then so was Tom.

Slowly, Stephen stood and brushed ineffectually at the dirt and damp on his pants. One step, then another. One anomaly was as good as any other. Reverently, he murmured to himself as he stepped between the coruscating shards of light.

 _“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.”_   



	3. Death Poems Are Mere Delusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written based on a prompt given to me by [](http://lukadreaming.livejournal.com/profile)[**lukadreaming**](http://lukadreaming.livejournal.com/) who wanted Ryan/Becker and "was it worth it?" or "the sky is falling".

They’d never officially met. At least, not while the other man was still alive. (Though now, Becker knew enough to considered death to be nothing more than a technicality.)

The first time they’d encountered each other had been Becker’s first day on the job, the incident at the British museum. He’d seen a shadow lurking in the halls of the Egyptian exhibit and gone back to investigate. Seeing Ryan and Stephen Hart had completely thrown him, leaving him unfocused for the rest of the day as he tried to puzzle out why he’d seen two men whom he knew to be dead.

Eventually he forgot about the sighting in the eddy and swirl of his new posting within the ARC. He’d almost written off Abby’s idiot brother’s comment about seeing another SF team in the future, but then he’d found the two men lingering in the shadows of his flat’s doorway that evening. Intensely aware of how odd the situation felt, Becker had invited them in.

The evening that followed had been both enlightening and disturbing. Discovering the true nature of the anomalies as understood by those who traveled them had been like twisting his brain into the shape of a mobius strip. It was too much to take in; the idea that anomalies were physical tears in time that bled outward, creating alternate pasts and futures. For the first time in his life, Becker had found himself wishing vehemently that he had the scientific background to explain what he know knew to Sarah and Professor Cutter.

But he’d been warned. Stephen was insistent that it wasn’t time yet. Each of them would come to that understanding in their own time. But not before.

After the day he’d had, the things he’d seen, Becker had fumed and raged at the pair of would-be dead men. So many lives could be saved if only they shared what they knew. The barren desolation of the future he’d seen might be prevented.

They’d explained in exquisite detail why he could never tell. Why no one would believe him. And in the end, Becker had been forced to admit that they were correct. No matter how much the weight of that knowledge would drag him downward, he could never share it with another living soul. (The irony of the fact that it was being shared with him by two dead men was not lost on him at all.)

Still, he’d wanted to hand in his resignation the following morning.

It’d been Ryan who convinced him not to quit. There was an understanding intrinsic to the position which Captain Ryan had once held that now belonged to Captain Becker. A kindred brotherhood of those who would give their lives to protect the motley team of scientists giving their lives in the race to save their world as time folded in on itself with ever increasing speed.

As they’d sat there together in the lounge of his flat, Becker finally screwed up the courage to ask Ryan the one thing he’d always wondered.

“Was it worth it?”

Ryan looked over at him from his position on the sofa. Hart’s arm, draped comfortable around his shoulders, gave him a rough but encouraging squeeze.  
“You mean dying for them?”

Becker nodded silently.

“Yes,” he answered unequivocally. “If I had it to do over again, I would still have made the same choices. Why else do you think I’ve never gone back, never tried to change the past?”

Now as he lay once again in the inky darkness of a decaying building in the future, he thought about those words. Abby’s weight resting against his chest he knew what his decision would be. Because no one who worked for the ARC was ever truly dead. Even if he died in the here and now eventually the Travelers would come for him. And he would become one of them.


	4. An Inn For Phantoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based on a prompt from [](http://knitekat.livejournal.com/profile)[**knitekat**](http://knitekat.livejournal.com/), who asked for Ryan/Lester 'sleepless' or 'too tired to sleep'. The title is a piece of a quote from Gaston Bachelard.

  
~~oOOo~~

Occasionally, Tom Ryan wondered whether some vague bit of prescience was responsible for the bout of insomnia that preceded the day of his death. Keyed up and jittery, he’d spent a couple hours in the gym after his shift ended. By the time he’d showered and changed into fresh clothing, he’d been considerably more relaxed. Walking down the long spiral of the ARC’s main operational hub, he spotted James Lester leaning against the rail and looking out pensively over Connor’s anomaly detector.

“You’re here late, sir,” Ryan said quietly as he approached the other man.

Lester grimaced.

“Another round of ministry paperwork requiring justification of the glazier’s services to repair all those broken windows at the golf course.”

Ryan nodded tersely. He could certainly sympathize with the mind numbing monotony of governmental bureaucratic paperwork.

“And why are you here so late, captain?”

Ryan shrugged, feeling the gesture loosen the knots in his shoulders that he’d been unable to release earlier in the day.

“Couldn’t wind down when I got off shift. Figured I’d make use of the training facilities before I headed home.”

Looking beyond the civilian clothing and slightly damp hair, Lester scrutinized the other man more closely. Captain Ryan had always been extraordinarily competent and contained. He’d had no cause for concern previously, but that didn’t preclude the possibility that he’d missed something vital. And in their line of work, anything that detracted from a man’s focus could prove deadly.

Seeing no outward signs that should raise cause for concern, Lester settled a stern but bland look on his features as he turned back to look out across his domain.

“Well if you’re done getting the coffee jitters out of your system, captain, I recommend you go get some sleep. No way of knowing what tomorrow might throw at us. And I can’t afford to have you at anything less than top performance.”

“Aye, sir,” Ryan saluted crisply and without further words, he continued his way down the walkway’s spiraling path.

~~oOOo~~

As he looked back on that moment now, Ryan still couldn’t be sure; had he somehow known the reaper would be coming for him the following day, or had his sleepless state caused him to make a critical error in the field leading to his own demise. Stephen always chided him for such introspection, but Ryan was a firm believer in the benefit of self-reflection as a means to improve one’s self.

“It’s almost time.”

Stephen’s voice brought him back out of his reveries. Ryan looked down at his watch then up at the anomaly shivering before them. Crouching down, he gathered up the dead weight of the black clad body at his feet.

Time to play the reaper once more.

Following Stephen through the anomaly, Ryan found himself standing in a featureless corridor looking down at an unconscious body that was a mirror image of the one he carried.

“Hurry up, we haven’t much time,” Stephen urged.

Ryan arranged the dead body to mimic the pose of the one beside it before lifting the unconscious man from his place. Without a word, he stepped back through the anomaly then laid his burden down on the grass. A quick shot of adrenaline and judicious use of a defibrillator pushed the man’s faltering heartbeat back into normal sinus rhythm. Sighing, Ryan sat back on his heels and waited.

A few moments later, Stephen reappeared through the anomaly and the shivering mirror-like shards of light winked out of existence.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied sourly. “Should wake up hurting like hell in a bit, but he’ll survive. You manage to cover our tracks?”

Stephen nodded.

“Easily done. Took the temporary loop out of their CCTV system and checked the computers. It looks like that virus we planted covered the anomaly well enough.”

“So all we have to do now, is wait.”

~~oOOo~~

Jess Parker ran through the surveillance footage for the hundredth time, trying to spot a ghost. Eyes red and puffy, she muttered to herself as she worked, running the footage backwards and forwards again and again.

From the doorway of his office, James Lester watched with silent concern.

“Should we do something, you think?” Connor asked quietly beside him.

“No,” Lester replied with heart heavy weariness. “Leave her be for now. Eventually she’ll accept that she couldn’t have prevented Captain Becker’s death.”


	5. The Folded Page

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter didn't come from a prompt, just my own very weird brain. Nick had almost understood, he'd almost gotten it right, but he was too neat, too tidy. Time didn't work that way. And Connor was the only one who truly understood....

It’d been back in the early days, after one of their first encounters with the anomalies. They were euphoric, high on success and the thrill of discovery. Stephen and Nick had been returning to their shared office at CMU intending to lock the doors and share a few celebratory drinks. Connor stayed quiet, hoping they’d absent-mindedly forget (as brilliant men so often did in his experience) that he was there in the car with them. Praying they’d overlook him when he trailed behind them into the office like a ghost.

Looking back on that moment now as he raced through the ARC’s hallways, Connor truly wasn’t certain whether that evening in their company had been the sublime gift he’d always considered it to be or a curse.

Stephen had yanked an amber filled bottle out of the back of a bottom file drawer. The confidence and surety of the gesture making Connor ache with envy. To know someone that well, be accepted and party to their secrets and quirks, left Connor breathless with wanting. The sound of scotch splashing into two tumblers had been so loud in the otherwise silent room. Connor nearly jumped out of his skin when Nick appeared beside him with a piece of paper.

“See this?” Nick had asked him, dangling the blank sheet in front of his face.

Trying to cover for his nerves Connor had simply nodded in puzzlement.

“What if all of time is like this sheet of paper?” Nick asked.

He folded the sheet precisely in half, resting it momentarily on top of stack of books to as he used a fingernail to firmly crease the fold. He held the paper up for inspection between two fingers.

“What happens when two moments at opposite ends of time converge?” Nick asked, warming up to his subject in a way that was all too familiar to Connor from countless hours of lectures.

Nick put the paper down and folded it once again, using his thumbnail to make the same precise crease.

“What happens when time folds over again and again,” he kept folding and creasing, turning the page into a tiny cube, “each moment overlapping with another, end over end until it cannot fold any more, until all the moments in time are connected.”

Connor stared attentively, waiting for the brilliant lesson, the epiphany at the end of the lecture.

“What would happen?” Nick asked.

The question hung in the air unanswered and Connor waited.

“Well?” Nick asked impatiently, turning to look at Connor, at Stephen.

“I don’t know, professor,” Connor stuttered quietly, feeling ashamed that he didn’t have the answer.

He looked over at Stephen, lounging back in one of the chairs. The other man shrugged nonchalantly and taken a sip of his drink, indifferent to Nick’s ranting after all this time as his assistant.

“Well neither do I, Connor,” Nick had replied with a frustrated huff before tossing the piece of paper back onto his desk.

Remembering that moment now, Connor understood that Nick had only gotten it partly right. As he raced for the parking garage, to find Phillip, Connor felt the heaviness of irony. Nick had been too tidy, too precise. Time wasn’t a piece of paper that had been neatly folded. It was crumpled and crushed together into a wad like discarded newsprint tossed in the trash. Moments touching dozens of other moments in a messy jumble. Time was folded in on itself, hiding secrets never meant for the eyes of man. Human being, the entire universe, was just an accident, existing between moments, between the pages. And time was getting ever smaller, crushing inward until there were no gaps left at all.

He had to tell someone. Had to get help. Abby was counting on him. Their baby, barely more than a fluttering of cells inside her mother’s womb, was counting on him.

This time he had to have the answers. He couldn’t afford to fail.


End file.
